


We Should Have Each Other with Cream

by orphan_account



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 19:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1440649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm inadvertently acquires a cat.  Chaos ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Should Have Each Other with Cream

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask me how this happened. Title taken from The Lovecats by The Cure (obviously).

Generally, of course, Malcolm fucking hates cats (or all animals, for that matter, especially those fuckwitted fellow members of his own species who somehow have the _gall_ to think they’re better than their own fucking _biology_ ).  Cats, though.  Cats are small, they’re fluffy, they fuck up your furniture, and anything that decides to eat its own fur and then can’t _digest_ that fur is too stupid to even constitute a blip on Malcolm Tucker’s radar.

Maggie is different, however.  He calls her Maggie because she’s ginger and full of shit.  She appears at his window one day, all teeth and claws and huge yellow eyes, and although he doesn’t notice it at the time, she’s still there when he stumbles in with Jamie at his heels in the early hours of the morning.

They fuck loudly and angrily and violently and Jamie leaves an hour later covered in bruises and sporting a grin the size of Julius’ fucking _head_ , but when Malcolm comes downstairs, freshly-showered and without that residual Jamie smell of cheap takeaway and cheap beer and cheap cigarettes, there’s a – there’s a fucking _monster_ sitting in the middle of his fucking _coffee table_ , and it’s watching him with eyes that speak volumes about all of the psycho-cat things it would like to be doing to him at this very moment. 

It pounces before he has a chance to even think about all of the new and exotic expletives he’d like to try out in this somewhat disconcerting situation, and so all he manages to get out is a long, high-pitched string of “Fuck, what the fucking fuck are you doing in my fucking house you little- _FUCK_ , no, no you little fucker I’m not having that, you do _not_ get to- _JESUS_ ,” and then he trips over a potted plant and ends up with a face full of cat.

It tilts its head in an eerie impersonation of Malcolm himself, coldblooded murder in its reptilian eyes, and for a second, before he realises he’s lying on his own kitchen floor with an animal the size of a football crouched on his chest, Malcolm genuinely thinks he is going to _die_.

Then the fucking thing licks his face, and he sits up with what some would describe as a _howl_ of outright horror.  “I can’t fucking believe this,” he says.

Maggie follows him around like a dog, except she’s a cat; he makes his coffee and she stands on his foot, he reads the paper and she claws at his leg until he fixes her with a glare she returns in equal measure, he goes to the fucking _toilet_ and she yowls at the door until he lets her in and experiences the most awkward shit of his entire life.

Of course, he doesn’t _officially_ name her until the “incident”.

The “incident” occurs four days later.  Maggie has been sleeping at the end of Malcolm’s bed, drinking Malcolm’s milk, and eating Malcolm’s cat food (the cat food he buys approximately three hours after she makes her flying death leap from the coffee table to his face). 

They’re watching a Cassavetes film together (he doesn’t particularly want to use the phrase “Malcolm and Maggie are watching a Cassavetes film together” because it sounds like some godawful ITV sitcom set in 1976, although the fact that he is watching a film _with a cat_ is embarrassing enough), when there’s a recognisable knock at the door, all sexual frustration with a hint of psychopath. 

“Get the fuck in here,” Malcolm shouts, because Maggie has a paw in a dangerous place and the look she gives him when he starts to move is far more terrifying than any of the shit Jamie can throw his way.  The man himself inevitably comes stomping through in his muddy shoes and that stupid fucking paedo-anorak and, presumably on the verge of stripping down and fucking Malcolm senseless on the sofa, he freezes – almost comically, Malcolm thinks – and fixes his huge, saucer eyes upon the lump of orange fur currently sitting on top of the man _he’d_ like to be on top of, thank you very much.

“What the –” Jamie starts.  He slowly, _very_ slowly, removes his coat and places it on the floor, as though this is some sort of fucking cowboy showdown and Maggie’s going to pull a six-shooter on him any second now.  “What the _fuck_ is that, Malc.”

“This is a cat, Jamie.  Be nice, or she will _eviscerate_ you.”

Jamie stares.  He stares some more.  Then he begins to smile, all shark teeth and the whites of his eyes, and Malcolm is reminded of a wolf, or perhaps a small, angry dog, a terrier, maybe, and as Jamie takes a stride towards the sofa, he raises an eyebrow and says, the picture of innocence, “I did warn you, Jamie.”

And then she’s _on_ him, and Jamie tumbles over the edge of the coffee table with a fireball of fur in his face.  Over the sound of Malcolm’s raucous laughter (he hasn’t laughed like this in _years_ , by the way), there can be heard a muffled litany of “fuck, cunt, MALCOLM, shite, I will _end_ you, you little- Jesus, GET THE FUCK OFF MY FUCKING EAR, Malcolm I swear to the fucking Devil herself if you don’t- CHRIST.”  Then there is a purr, a lick, and Maggie trots her way back to the sofa and plants herself at Malcolm’s feet like a tiny little centurion. 

Jamie emerges from behind the coffee table like a corpse returning from the dead.  His hair, usually fluctuating between a steady level of “bird’s nest” and “dragged through hedge backwards,” has graduated to “rabid hedgehog in post-nuclear landscape.”  There are tiny little scratches covering every patch of skin available, pink and puffy at the edges, and one of them is actually _dripping blood_ (onto Malcolm’s carpet, which is a damn fucking shame), and his shirt is ripped from collar to sleeve as though some sort of huge, feral dog has grabbed a hold of him.

Malcolm grins.  “Alright you little Thatcherite shite,” he says (affectionately, of course), and picks Maggie up in one hand.  “You’re sleeping in the figurative doghouse tonight.”  He carries her to the kitchen and places her inside a small, padded box (custom-made, but he’s not going to tell anyone [especially not Jamie] that).  He pours her a bowl of milk, scoops out some shite-brown gloop onto a plate, and leaves her to curl up happily in the afterglow of absolute bloodlust.

He gets his arms underneath a still somewhat dazed Jamie and drags him towards the stairs.  “You and Maggie are gonnae get on like a house on fire,” he whispers. 


End file.
